Vonnegut, Kurt Jr.

Vonnegut worked on the nation's first and (then) only daily high school newspaper, The Daily Echo.

1941-1943 - Attended Cornell University where he served as an opinions section editor for the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, and majored in chemistry before joining the U.S. Army during World War II.

1945 - Witnessed the aftermath of bombing of Dresden, Germany, which destroyed much of the city.

Attended the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology and also worked as a police reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago.

1952 - Novel was the dystopian science fiction novel Player Piano (1952), in which human workers have been largely replaced by machines.

1959 - Continued to write science fiction short stories before his second novel, The Sirens of Titan, was published this year.

2000 - A fire destroyed the top story of his home. Vonnegut suffered smoke inhalation and was hospitalized in critical condition for four days. He survived, but his personal archives were destroyed. After leaving the hospital, he recuperated in Northampton, Massachusetts.

He currently serves as Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having replaced Isaac Asimov in what Vonnegut calls "that totally functionless capacity".